Day, A. Grove (Arthur Grove), 1904-1994

Member of Faculty, University of Hawaii, 1944-1969, Senior Professor of English, 1961-1969.

Loomis lived from 1799 -1836, and had the various vocations of missionary, printer, linguist and educator. The events in the journal occur mainly on Oahu, where he was engaged as a Congregational missionary. He did important work in putting the Hawaiian language into written form, and he created and printed dictionaries, hymnals and spelling books. He taught English to native Hawaiians and worked to convert them to Christianity. He returned to the mainland in 1827. The journals give a very good picture of life in the islands at this time, both of native practices and of the experience of Americans and Europeans. Much of the entries during 1826 concern the hostilities between the crews of visiting ships and the missionary community. The missionaries had convinced native leaders that prostitution was sinful, and the native chiefs therefore declared the practice to be taboo. Crews of visiting ships arrived with much different expectations, to the point of threatening to kill the missionaries if they did not reverse the ban. Aside from this late unpleasantness, life for westerners was very tied to the coming and going of ships, and Honolulu (spelled Honoruru in the journals) seems to have been a busy port, even in these early years, with vessels arriving from the east and west coasts of America, from Europe, and from Canton. Loomis regularly mentions the arrival and departure of vessels which would bring news and supplies.

Arthur Grove Day was a Professor of English at the University of Hawaii and an expert on the literature of the Pacific Islands.